The real robot

Tutorial 2 was the project. This one is the same project on a desk: printed parts, Feetech servos, a Raspberry Pi, and the keyboard you already wrote. You do not create a second codebase. solarian run-robot sim=false is the switch.

Finish Tutorial 2 first. Simulation keeps working afterward. The class attribute stays is_sim = True, and each real run overrides it.

Chapters

1. Parts — what to buy, from the hardware pages.
2. Assemble — the arm, then the gripper and camera.
3. Computer — the Pi, the serial port, a deployment file.
4. Calibrate — servo ranges and direction. Not the camera yet.
5. Drive it — the keyboard, on the metal.
6. Real camera — picamera2, and the live image in the controller.

Two calibrations, on purpose

solarian calibrate records how far each servo turns and which way is which. That is this tutorial. It makes the keyboard on the real arm match the keyboard in sim.

Hand-eye calibration — where the camera sits relative to the fingertips — waits for Tutorial 4. A policy that reaches for something it sees is wrong without it. Joint teleop is not. Doing both in one sitting is how a working arm gets blamed on a bad policy, or the other way around.

While you work

The arm can pinch and it can swing into itself. Start with a clear table, one hand on Control-C, and the other off the linkage. The first motion after torque comes on should be a small one: a single s, watched, then stop. The drive chapter says when to kill torque. Read it before you energize the bus.